Child labor is a shame to nation with so much of youth unemployed !

It is really surprising that we have 5 cr ( though official declaration is only 90 lacs )of unemployed youth in the country but still child labor persists in the same proportion… Can’t we balance it ? This will address two of our major issues of economic development – unemployment and child labor.
Widely, any child below the specified age by law ,who is engaged in some work in exchange of remuneration to feed self or his family is referred to as ‘Child Labor’. Truly speaking, child labor is detrimental to his mental, social, physical, and emotional development. Though International Labor organization allows a child to work for light hours wherein he can continue to pursue his education and at the same time can learn some craft and skills which will help him in future but the law has been bent and twisted to suit everybody’s requirement.
Industrial revolution has encouraged child labor in a broad way. Child labor can be in both the form – self employment or work for others. Child labor could be what we see in our everyday life in the form of rag pickers, organized beggars, street sellers, child prostitute etc are basically the victim of some or the other gangsters who exploit them for their own benefit and they are the worst type of child labors. The other type is the one who are sent to work in some factories or farms or similar occupation by their parents for enhancing the income of the family, but here also the hazardous working condition etc are not being considered. The most pathetic situation according to me is , when the parents sell their own child to the thugs for small amount of money. What a shame….
India is a glaring example of a nation hounded by the evil of child labor. Though child labor problem prevails in rich and industrialized countries also, but the figures are too less compared to us. On one hand the developed countries took the matter very seriously as human rights violation but at the same time the poor nations are accepting this issue in the name of living necessity though all sorts of laws are there to protect them from such callous situations.
The root cause for child labor is poverty, illiteracy of the parents, improper education facilities, social requirements etc. and the reason for the employers to hire them is less pay, more work and no union threats. Due to these benefits of child labor the parents do not get jobs and in order to run the family they are forced to send the child to work. Another major reason ( which is also age old practice in India )is the debt reconciliation, wherein the child is sold to the loaner in lieu of the loan that the parents have taken, and so the child becomes a bonded labor to the loaner. They are then exploited by the loaner against the small amount of debt. Greed overtakes where there should be humanity..
I would like to quote an example, Nike uses a plant that employs children but they also provide education as part of their day work, I see this as an opportunity for education to those children who otherwise would have never had the education, and at the same time they also learn the skill of the trade.

Apart from what government is doing to control child labor, to my opinion, government should also formulate some policies to tackle the root cause of Child labor and the corporate can help them doing this. For e.g all the premier medical institutes should have regulation that at least 15 % of their business should be spent to give free medical facilities to the under-privileged people, similarly the premier educational institutes should give free education facility to the under-privileged children, corporate should reserve some quota to enroll poorer people in their workforce so the parents don’t send their child for work, and so on.. We can’t depend on the government alone , to take up all the issues without the support of people. But, what is expected from them is that they adhere to the laws more strictly with enforcement etc..
Government has initiated the process of eradication but this goal cannot be achieved in one stroke, they have taken measures like- For the Ninth Plan Period (1997-98 to 2001-02), an allocation of Rs. 2,610 million has been made for the National Child Labor Projects. Industry specific projects have also been undertaken for the prevention of employment of children and the withdrawal and rehabilitation of children. Eradication of poverty, giving education and employment to the parents are the priority to face the child labor problem. The support of various Ministries has been enlisted with a view to adopting a multi-dimensional strategy to ensure that the benefit of development programs percolates to this group.
Though such a issue can never be summed up, but still , I would say that child labor is both, a bad economic practice and a social evil…because without an educated youth we cannot have a developed nation so education and development opportunity should be given to all the children. We should always keep in mind that industrialization, economic development, Green revolution etc can afford to wait but youth cannot be captured .So, Government as well as the people of the nation please wake up and take it as a personal agenda to eradicate child labor. Government with the implementation of its policies with authorities and enforcement agencies, and people with the pledge not to recruit and send their little ones to this menace, and also by raising voice and awareness…